Beginner-friendly gardening guides from Laura Bennett — a backyard gardener in Asheville, North Carolina (USDA Zone 7a) who’s been growing food and cut flowers for nine years. Her 14-raised-bed garden, cut-flower patch, and dahlia collection are where every guide starts. You’ll find seasonal planting calendars for Zones 5–9, step-by-step guides for raised beds and container gardens, dahlia and hydrangea care, companion planting, no-dig methods, pest control without chemicals, and the mistakes Laura made so you don’t have to. If a technique survives a North Carolina summer and a wet spring in her own beds, it makes it onto HomeGlowHacks. Browse the latest gardening articles below.
Every April I get the same text from someone: is it too late to plant berries this year? And every April I send the same answer: absolutely not, you are right on time. April is genuinely the best month to plant most backyard berries across most of the United States. The soil is waking up, … Read more
The moment your garden starts producing food, the bugs find it. Aphids on the tomatoes, cabbage worms in the broccoli, squash bugs lurking under leaves, and cucumber beetles demolishing your seedlings overnight. Your first instinct is to reach for a chemical spray — and that is where most gardeners make the biggest mistake. Chemical pesticides … Read more
I was convinced raspberries were a crop for people with acreage. My grandmother grew a whole hedge of them along the fence line of a farm in Vermont — that was my entire mental picture of raspberry growing. So when I moved into a rowhouse with a 12×18 backyard, I mentally crossed raspberries off my … Read more
You do not need a garden bed to grow spectacular dahlias. A sunny balcony, a patio, or even a front stoop with a few large pots is all you need. Container-grown dahlias can be just as impressive as garden-grown ones if you choose the right varieties, use the right soil, and adjust your watering routine … Read more
The hardest part of gardening for beginners is waiting. You plant seeds, water them, check every morning, and nothing seems to happen for weeks. Then you read that tomatoes take 80 days and wonder if this whole gardening thing is worth the patience. Here is the secret experienced gardeners know: some crops grow shockingly fast. … Read more
The first year I grew strawberries in a raised bed I did everything the seed packet told me. Plant 18 inches apart, mulch with straw, water regularly. By July my bed was a jungle of runners, a mat of leaves, and maybe two dozen small berries that mostly went to slugs. I stood there looking … Read more
This is the first question every new dahlia grower asks, and the answer is both yes and no depending on where you live and what you do in the fall. Dahlias are not annuals that die and disappear forever after one season. But they are not reliably winter-hardy perennials either, at least not in most … Read more
Hydrangeas are the only common garden plant that lets you play chemist — you can literally change the color of the flowers by adjusting the soil. Blue in acidic soil, pink in alkaline soil, and every shade of purple in between. It sounds like a gardening myth, but it is real science: soil pH controls … Read more
I killed my first blueberry bush in six weeks. I planted it in a big pretty pot on the back porch, filled it with bagged “tree and shrub” soil, watered it faithfully, and watched the leaves turn yellow and then brown until the entire plant gave up. I blamed the nursery. I blamed the weather. … Read more
Dahlias are not fussy plants once they get going, but they are incredibly picky about what they sit in. Get the soil wrong and you will deal with rotting tubers, weak floppy stems, all leaves and no flowers, or plants that mysteriously refuse to thrive despite getting plenty of sun and water. Get the soil … Read more
